With my friends Petra and Achim I’m on the road again. We got up early this morning. By train we went to Frankfurt Airport, Air Moldova brought us safely to Chişinău (Kishinev) – the capital of Moldova. We began to explore the city – the first day of our two week trip.

Chişinău – view from the Cosmos Hotel

Chişinău – Soviet war memorial

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – fragments of Jewish gravestones

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – fragments of Jewish gravestones

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – fragments of Jewish gravestones

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – fragments of Jewish gravestones

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – gravestone with Greek inscription

Chişinău – Christian cemetery – grave of a Jewish family

Chişinău – Christian cemetery

Our first walk took us to the Christian cemetery next to a huge Soviet war memorial. Maybe we would have visited the cemetery anyway, but the childhood memories of my friend Tatiana were decisive to really do it. Tatiana described the Christian cemetery as one of her favorite places in the city – and she remembers to have seen there fragments of Jewish grave stones in the cemetery wall. It did not take long to find them. Apparently, the whole wall is built of broken grave stones. Again and again we saw Hebrew letters.

It is said, the core of the cemetery was Armenian. In fact, we saw some graves with Armenian writing, but we also saw Romanian and Russian inscriptions. Much to my surprise I found several grave stones with Greek inscription and – even more surprising – a Jewish family grave with a grave stone in the form of a Menorah and two large Stars of David. It seems we have arrived in Bessarabia and its multi-ethnic mix.

We stay in the Cosmos, a Soviet-style hotel, overlooking tower-buildings from the same period. Today, we are too tired for long walks, the day was long. Tomorrow we hope to be fresh and to explore more.

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